Summary: Males and females view physical and emotional cheating differently. Women consider emotional affairs to be more serious, and men believe physical infidelity to be more serious generally. Researchers report if one partner feels their relationship is threatened by cheating, it is harder for them to forgive infidelity, regardless of gender.
Source: NTNU
Infidelity is one of the most common reasons that heterosexual couples break up. Researchers who have studied 160 different cultures find this to be true worldwide.
However, men and women look at different types of infidelity differently.
Men usually regard physical infidelity – when the partner has sex with another person – more seriously than women do.
Women regard emotional infidelity – when the partner initiates a close relationship with another person – as more serious.
Despite experiencing the different types of infidelity differently, men and women are about equally willing to forgive their partner. And the new findings show that the degree of forgiveness is not related to the type of infidelity.
“We’re surprised that the differences between the sexes weren’t greater. The mechanisms underlying forgiveness are more or less identical between genders,” says Professor Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Department of Psychology.
He has co-authored a new article in the Journal of Relationships Research. The article addresses infidelity and the mechanisms behind forgiveness.
A research group at NTNU recruited 92 couples for the study. These couples independently completed a questionnaire related to issues described in hypothetical scenarios where the partner had been unfaithful in various ways.
One scenario describes the partner having sex with another person, but not falling in love.
In the other scenario, the partner falls in love with another person, but does not have sex.
So how willing are people to forgive their partner? It turns out that men and women both process their partner’s infidelity almost identically.
Most people, regardless of gender and the type of infidelity, think it unlikely that they would forgive their partner’s infidelity.
“Whether or not the couple breaks up depends primarily on how threatening to the relationship they perceive the infidelity to be,” says first author Trond Viggo Grøntvedt, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology.
The more threatening the infidelity feels, the worse it is for the relationship.
Whether partners believe the relationship can continue also depends on how willing they are to forgive each other, especially in terms of avoiding distancing themselves from their partner.
Of course, great individual differences exist, even within each gender. People react differently to infidelity, according to their personality and the circumstances.
“A lot of people might think that couples who have a strong relationship would be better able to tolerate infidelity, but that wasn’t indicated in our study,” says Professor Mons Bendixen at NTNU’s Department of Psychology.
Another aspect plays a role in cases of emotional infidelity, where no sex has taken place. To what extent can the unfaithful partner be blamed for what happened?
If you willingly have sex with another person, it pretty much doesn’t matter whether you feel it’s your fault.
“The degree of blame attributed to the partner was linked to the willingness to forgive,” says Bendixen.
The relationship is at greater risk if the partner is required to bear a big part of the responsibility for ending up in an intimate relationship with someone else.
“The blame factor doesn’t come into play when the partner is physically unfaithful,” Grøntvedt says.
If you voluntarily have sex with someone other than your partner, it’s more or less irrelevant whether you think it was mostly your fault or not. Possible forgiveness does not depend on accepting blame.
About this music and neuroscience research article
Source:
NTNU
Media Contacts:
Trond Viggo Grøntvedt – NTNU
Image Source:
The image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Closed access
“Breakup Likelihood Following Hypothetical Sexual or Emotional Infidelity: Perceived Threat, Blame, and Forgiveness” by Trond Viggo Grøntvedt, Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair and Mons Bendixen. Journal of Relationships Research.
Abstract
Breakup Likelihood Following Hypothetical Sexual or Emotional Infidelity: Perceived Threat, Blame, and Forgiveness
Infidelity represents a major threat to relationships, often resulting in dissolution of couples. The process from infidelity to potential breakup was studied in 92 couples using questionnaires concerning hypothetical scenarios of sexual and emotional infidelity. Structural equation model analyses using couple data for both infidelity types suggest that the level of perceived threat to the relationship was the main predictor of likelihood of breakup for men and women. Following each type of imagined infidelity, this effect was partly mediated by forgiveness. For emotional infidelity, level of blame was associated with forgiveness and breakup. The effect of blame on breakup was fully mediated by keeping less distance. The mechanisms involved in these processes were highly similar for women and men.
